The Two Keys To Being A Great Leader

There's an old saying that goes, "people don't follow titles, they follow leaders". In a small business setting, where you have limited resources and have to execute effectively to be successful, leadership is critical to your success! As a small business owner, are you a strong leader? Are your employees maximizing the potential of your business due to your leadership? If you answered those questions with anything but a resounding ‘yes', then you might benefit from two key things that all great leaders do.

Key #1 - The 1st Key To Being a Great Leader is Effective Listening!

No matter what leadership attribute you attempt to measure, they can all be improved by one thing - improved listening skills! Effective listening is critical to understanding your employees, your customers and your business. The challenge here is to really stop and evaluate if you are truly a good listener. Here are a couple of key things to pay attention to:

Do you find yourself multitasking during meetings and key interactions with your employees, customers, vendors, and partners? If you are doing e-mail, responding to text messages, or waiting for your Blackberry to go off, then you aren't really listening. Additionally, when you are interacting with someone and are doing these things, they know you aren't listening to them! So, what kind of message is that sending?

Can you effectively rephrase or repeat the essence of your conversation with someone? If not, you probably aren't listening to what is being said. Try practicing reflective listening next time you have a conversation with someone. You can do this by simply saying, "what I heard you just say is..." and then reflect back what you heard. If the person responds back with something different, then you know that you need to work on this.

If you want to become a great listener, simply turn off your Blackberry, shut down your e-mail, remove everything that's distracting you, and simply focus on the person you are talking to. When you do this, you will quickly see the impact it has!

Key #2 - Effectively Communicating Exactly What Your Expectations Are

Great leaders effectively communicate exactly what they expect from people. Do your employees know exactly what your expectations are? Do you communicate in a precise way that inspires your employees and other key people around you? Is it even clear to you what you want from people? If not, you can't effectively lead people.

One way to figure out if you are hitting the mark here is to sit down with yourself and write down exactly what it is you want from the people working for you. Then, evaluate if that's what you are getting. Also, ask your people what they think your expectations are of them. If their answers aren't measuring up to what you wrote down, you have some improvements to make.

Try implementing the above tips, and watch your leadership skills go to the next level!